Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1887-11-11
BILL NYE.
The Genial Humorist Writes About Hotel
Changes.

BILL NYE.
The Genial Humorist Writes About Hotel
Changes.
America has made many gigantic
strides, aside from those made at the
battle Of Bull Run, and her people
spend much OF their time pointing with
pride to her remarkable progress, but
we are prone to dwell too much upon
our advantages as summer resort and
our adroit measures of deciding the
Presidency before we are asked, while
we forget some of our more important
improvements, like the elevated rail-
way and the American Hotel.
Let us, for moment, look at the
great changes that have been wrought
in hotels during the past century. How
marked has been the improvement and
how wonderful the advancement.
Everything has been changed. Even
the towels have been changed.
Electric bells, consisting of long
and alert wire with an overcoat button
at one end and reticent boy at the
other, have taken the place of human
voice and low-browed red-elm club.
Where once we were compelled to fall
down dark, narrow staircase, now we
can go down the elevator or wander
down the wrong stairway and fine our
selves in the laundry.
Where once We were mortified by
being compelled to rise ut table, reach
nine feet and stab a porous pancake
with our fork, meantime wiping the
milk gravy out of large yellow bowl
with our coat-tails, now we can hire at
tall, 1.-the gentleman in full-dress suit
to pass us the pancakes.
Even the barrooms of American
hotels are changed. Once the bar
tender waited till his customer ran all
his remarks into one long, hoarse word,
with u hiccough on one end, and then
he took him by the collar and threw
him out into the cold and chaotic night.
Now, the bartender gradually raises on
the price of drinks till his customer ia
frozen out, and while he is gone to the
reading-room to borrow some more
money the chemist moves the bar some
where else, and when the guest returns
he finds barber-shop where he thought
he left barroom.
One hundred years, on their swift
pinions, have borne away the big and
earnest dinner-bell and the sway-backed
hair trunk that surprised man so when
he sat down upon it to consider what
clothes he would put on first.
All these evidences of our crude, en-
bryotic existence are gone, and in their
places we have electric bells and Sara
toga trunks wherein we may conceal
our hotel room and still have space left
for our clothes.
It is very rare now that we see q
United States Senator shaking 2-year.
old Mambrino hair trunk up three
flights of stairs to his room in order to
secure the labor vote. Men, as we'll as
hotels and hotel soap, have changed.
Where once cake of soap would only
last few weeks, science has come in
and perfected q style Of pink soap,
favored with vanilla, that will last fol
years, and q new slippery-elm towel
that is absolutely impervious to moist.
ure. Hand in hand, this soap and towel
go gayly down the corridors of time,
welcoming the coming and speeding
the parting guest, jumping deity out
Of the hands of the aristocracy into tn;
hands of q receiver, but always calm,
smooth, and latherless.
Nature did not fit me to be the sue
cessful guest at hotel. can see why
it is so. do not know how to impress
ahotel. I think all the way up from the
depot, as changed hands with my hot.
handled and heavy bag, how I will
stride up to the counter and ask for the
room that is generally given to Mr..
Blaine, but when 1 get there I fall up
against cold wave, step back into q
large India-rubber cuspidor, and my
over-taxed valise bursts open. While
the porter and gather up my collars
and gently press them in with our feet,
the clerk decides that he hasn't got
such room as want.
then 60 to another hotel and sue.
coed in getting room which commands
view of large red fire-escape, long
sweep of undulating caves trough and
lightning-rod-usually No. 75S-near
the laundry chimney and adjoining the
baggage elevator.
After had remained at the hotel
several days and paid my bill whenever
I have been asked to do so and shown
that 1 did not eat much and that I was
willing to carry up my own coal, the
proprietor relents and puts me in a
room that is below timberline, and
though it is better room, I feel all
the time as though I had driven out the
night Waterman, for the bed is still
warm, and knowing that he must be
sleeping out in the cold hall all night
as he patiently watches the hotel,
cannot sleep until or 4 o'clock in the
morning, and then I have to get up
while the chambermaid makes my bed
for the day.
I try hard when I enter hotel to as
sumo an air of arrogance and defiance,
but am all the time afraid that there
is some one present who is acquainted
with me.
Illogical Punctuation.